WHY WE CARE

Plugged In exists to shine a light on the world of popular entertainment while giving you and your family the essential tools you need to understand, navigate and impact the culture in which we live. Through reviews, articles and discussions, we want to spark intellectual thought, spiritual growth and a desire to follow the command of Colossians 2:8: "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."

<div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div>

YOUR STORIES

Family uses Plugged In as a ‘significant compass’

"I am at a loss for words to adequately express how much it means to my husband and me to know that there is an organization like Focus that is rooting for us. Just today I was reading Psalm 37 and thinking about how your ministry provides ways to 'dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.' We have two teenagers and an 8-year-old in our household...Plugged In has become a significant compass for our family. All three of our kids are dedicated to their walk with Christ but they still encounter challenges. Thanks for all of your research and persistence in helping us navigate through stormy waters."

Plugged In helps college student stand-up for his belief

"Thanks for the great job you do in posting movie and television reviews online. I’m a college freshman and I recently had a confrontational disagreement with my English professor regarding an R-rated film. It is her favorite movie and she wanted to show it in class. I went to your Web site to research the film’s content. Although I had not seen the movie myself, I was able to make an educated argument against it based on the concerns you outlined. The prof said that she was impressed by my stand and decided to poll the whole class and give us a choice. We overwhelmingly voted to watch a G-rated movie instead! I’ve learned that I can trust your site and I will be using it a lot in the future.”

Plugged In brings ‘Sanity and Order’ to Non-believer

“Even though I don’t consider myself a Christian, I find your Plugged In Web site useful and thought-provoking. No one reviews movies like you do. Instead of being judgmental, you put entertainment ‘on trial.’ After presenting the evidence, you allow the jury of your readers to decide for themselves what they should do. In my opinion, you bring sanity and order to the wild world of modern day entertainment. Keep up the good work!”

Mom thinks Plugged In is the ‘BEST Christian media review site’

"Our family doesn't go to the movies until we go online and check out your assessment of a given film. I think this is the BEST Christian media review website that I've found, and I recommend it to my family and friends. Keep up the good work!"

SUPPORT THE WORK OF PLUGGED IN

Our hope is that whether you're a parent, youth leader or teen, the information and tools at Plugged In will help you and your family make appropriate media decisions. We are privileged to do the work we do, and are continually thankful for the generosity and support from you, our loyal readers, listeners and friends.

On DVD

Shaun of the Dead

PLUGGED IN RATING

We hope this review was both interesting and useful. Please share it with family and friends who would benefit from it as well.

Movie Review

Zombie movies have occupied their own subgenre of the horror category ever since George A. Romero’s 1968 and ’78 classics Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. With recent additions like 28 Days Later, the Resident Evil series, and a remake of Dawn, the time is ripe for a zombie comedy. And who better than the Brits to deliver one with loads of understated humor, buckets of gore and some real-life subtext to, er, chew on?

The title character is a North Londoner who loves the neighborhood pub and his girl Liz. But Shaun’s got a problem. After three years together, Liz is tired of waiting for him to get his life together. She wants more than to spend every night at the Winchester with Shaun’s profane slacker friend/roommate, Ed, and her two friends from college, Diane and David. At 29, Shaun’s working a dead-end job (so to speak) at a TV store and headed nowhere in particular. When not at the pub or work, he’s home playing video games with the flatulent and goofy Ed and getting lectured to grow up by their other flatmate Pete. Shaun loves his mom, but he can’t stand his uptight and manipulative stepdad.

When Liz finally dumps him, Shaun feels lost, gets drunk and discovers a zombie in the back yard. But the multiplying zoms give Shaun a surprising purpose in life. With Ed’s help, he will kill them, save his mom, save Liz, take them all to the pub, and wait for the whole zombie mess to play itself out. At least that’s the plan.

Positive Elements

Shaun is loyal to his friends. He also shows surprising courage (and discovers his confidence) by seeking to protect his friends, his family and Liz. Several characters sacrifice themselves for others.

In a surprisingly touching scene, Shaun’s much-hated stepdad reveals that he’s always loved Shaun and really wanted to help him grow up to be a worthwhile man. Shaun also displays his deep affection for his mom.

Viewed from one angle, the whole film can be seen as a metaphor about growing up, taking responsibility for your life and making a lasting connection with the one you love. More on that in the conclusion.

Spiritual Content

Sexual Content

Ed makes some crude sexual jokes, including a couple about Shaun’s mom. One male zombie is naked, though he’s only seen from the waist up. In a brief TV clip, a woman claims to still love her zombie husband and is asked if she “goes to bed with it.”

Violent Content

By design this zombie comedy is a splatterfest. Because of the laughs, the gore feels a little tongue-in-cheek. (Not necessarily a good thing.) The special effects team celebrate zombiedom’s low-budget roots by giving every wound, every missing limb, every limping, groaning undead the full, bloody Creature Feature treatment.

As we learn from a TV news commentator early on, zombies can only be killed by “removing the head” or “smashing the brains.” Thus, our heroes repeatedly attempt to do both to these traditionally slow-moving creatures who only grow truly menacing in large numbers.

Not only do zombies get dismembered, impaled, shot, gouged, and run over (and then get up and stagger back for more, limbs akimbo), they also violently munch living humans resulting in spurting, gushing and pouring blood in every direction. Some of this stuff is really nauseating, including a moment when Shaun is forced to shoot a very recently departed love one in the head. The gore reaches its apex when a central character is disemboweled (with intestines and organs on display) and then torn apart at the limbs by the zombie horde. Did I mention there’s lots of blood?

Crude or Profane Language

The zombies themselves don’t swear, but everyone else in the film does. In addition to 40-some uses of the f-word (including at least one use of "m------f---er"), the film includes multiple uses of the s-word, "b-llocks" and "b--ch." Add to that a handful of the most obscene anatomical references possible, and abuses of God’s and Jesus’ names.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Most of the action takes place in a pub. Most of the characters smoke or drink, but Shaun and Ed specialize in both, getting completely drunk in one early scene during which they sing a song about drug use. Ed is also a would-be marijuana dealer. And if blood is considered a drug (zombies may well believe that it is!), there's enough of it here to satisfy a global invasion force of the undead.

Other Negative Elements

Ed scratches his crotch a lot. While impersonating an ape, he also makes an obscene gesture. And I’m not sure I mentioned how much blood there is in this movie. And the biting. And the dismemberment. And the bullets through the brains. And the zombies eating people. And the ...

Conclusion

Already a big hit in the U.K., Shaun of the Dead is a funny, disgusting movie that hides its sensitive beating heart under gallons of zombie makeup. Although a comedy, the film is no spoof, presenting it’s flesh-eating undead in horrific detail. And though not as meanspirited as the Dawn of the Dead remake, it’s equally gross, violent and foul-mouthed. Before the blood starts flying, writer/director Edgar Wright plays with his audience’s expectations, setting us up to see zombies who turn out instead to be ordinary people plodding through their day—riding the bus, working, shuffling down the street—with slack-jawed looks of sheer boredom. Shaun literally stumbles through this world, clueless about how to hold on to Liz or rise above his own stagnant existence.

When the zombies do start showing up over the shoulders of Shaun and his friends, they go unnoticed for a while to everyone but us.

In the end, though, Shuan isn’t really about zombies. It doesn’t reveal how the zombie infestation started, and it doesn’t offer any sci-fi fixes to the problem. Instead, the story is always about Shaun’s struggle to be more than a zombie himself. Writer/star Simon Pegg told moviecitynews.com, “In our film, if they're anything, [the zombies] stand in for apathy, and urban living, and becoming ... an anonymous automaton in a collective, where you don't have any identity.”

Beyond the profanity and stomach-turning violence is a metaphor suggesting that if a man wants to get anywhere in life, he can’t just sit mind-numbed on the couch waiting for something good to happen. He’s got to break out and “do something” positive and maybe selfless—even if he risks making big mistakes along the way. Shaun also learns that if two people really want to make a lasting connection with each other, they’re going to have to let go of all the other relationships that are getting in the way.

I’m not suggesting filmmakers Wright and Pegg have mounted any kind of a crusade here. Shaun is still meant mostly to provoke laughter, make people jump in their seats and gross everybody out with zombie gore. But those messages in the margins aren’t bad ones for the movie’s target audience—hordes of restless, video game-addicted, entertainment-engorged 18- to 35-year-old men who regularly consume violent content. Would that they have ears to hear such "shocking" ideas. Oh, and one more thing. There's lots of blood. Really.

This week’s most popular

movie Reviews

Advertisement

Get weekly e-news, Culture Clips & more!

Plugged In Blog

Good media discernment is about guarding our eyes and hearts before we watch or listen. And it's also about grappling with the entertainment we do see or hear. That's why the Plugged In Blog is devoted to guarding, discussing and grappling.

Family Safety

Protecting our families today is more vital than ever. And by partnering with ClearPlay and Net Nanny, Focus on the Family hopes to point you to resources and tools that can help you navigate the entertainment world around you.